1. Field
The present invention relates generally to configuring a remote station with a digital certificate from a local root certificate authority for securing a wireless network.
2. Background
A secure private wireless network needs to authorize only legitimate devices or stations to join the network. The authorization of a device should include the authentication of the device. Authentication generally relies on a password, secret keys (challenge-response authentication), or a public key previously exchanged in a secure manner.
Digital certificates (hereinafter certificates) issued by a global certificate authority are not helpful because all devices having a certificate from the global certificate authority will be authenticated and considered legitimate. As a result, an access point of a private wireless network may not deny access to a neighbor's device based on a certificate from the global certificate authority because the certificate will be valid.
Also, the numeric values of a certificate and corresponding private key are very large. It may not be reasonable to expect a user to manually enter such values.
There is therefore a need for a technique for configuring a remote station with a certificate for securing a wireless network in an effective manner.